Elle Fanning shares a laugh with a friend while out in Los Angeles on Wednesday afternoon (March 14).

The 19-year-old actress recently opened up with Glamour about beauty definitions and shared a heartbreaking story about how she changed her entire look when she first started school.

“Beauty is not just what you look like from the outside,” Elle says. “I’ve certainly experienced not feeling super confident.”

She recalls one story in particular: “I was homeschooled until third grade. In fourth grade I went to a regular school, and it was the first time I had been in a classroom with kids my age, so I was a little freaked out.”

“My hair is actually really curly, so I got it blown out straight, and I wore contacts — my eyes are terrible — and this one boy came to me on the playground and said, ‘You’re so beautiful. I’m going to marry you!’”

It all changed the next day, though.

“I washed my hair, so it was curly, and wore my glasses,” Elle says. “And he told me, ‘I’m not going to marry you anymore.’ I’m like, What? All because of physical appearance? Heartbreaking.”

Elle likens it to the makeover moment in The Princess Diaries: “She has glasses and really curly hair, and then you remove those and: Wow! She’s so hot.”